Monday, September 28, 2015

Making users awesome book review

Kathy did what she usual does with her books... lots of descriptive pictures and images!

"Badass making users awesome" highlights what product-developers should actually worry about and that simply is how to make their users badass. The book clearly specifies through out that your goal should not be to make your users good at using your app or product but to make your users better at what your app is meant for.

The book goes ahead to give detailed steps on how to make ones users badass or in other words make your users better. It highlights how organisations generally "think they are awesome" and how their products help make their users awesome. Most organisations have very little intersection when it comes to how they make their users awesome and this is owed to the fact that such organisations focus on the wrong thing... other competing organisations.

A certain chapter of the book titled "The challenge" centres on what organisations or developers should be focusing on, and that is, the bigger picture. Organisations should ask themselves what the bigger context is in which it and its competitors are a subset of? The book states that by having this shift in perspective organisations will begin to see what users use their products for and by extension how they can make their users better at what they do.

The chapter titled "What experts do" delves into the science of badass. It shows how organisation or developers can apply certain techniques to their processes in order to make their users badass! The central theme to this chapter is the question "What did those who did become expert do differently from those who wanted to but didn’t?". And it suggests that the answer to that question is... yup, you guessed right, practice and lots of it. The book actually refers to it as deliberate practice.

"Badass making users awesome" is a great book and ideal for someone who has had quite some time developing products and needs to know how to finally build that highly sought after awesome product that makes its users awesome.